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What is Programmatic Advertising and How Does it Work?

Programmatic advertising, also known as programmatic display advertising, is an automatic process of buying and selling ad inventory. Ad inventory is an online space available for advertisements on digital media. Before advertising was programmatic, it was done manually.

In purchasing manual orders, advertisers were in contact with a sales team for:

Requesting for proposals: It is a document that solicits proposal in procurement of online ad space

Bidding: It is an offering of certain price at an auction

Quotation: It is an estimated price deal for displaying online ad

Human negotiation: It is discussion regarding sale and purchase of online ad space aimed at reaching an agreement

However, with programmatic advertising, a software is used for purchasing digital advertising. Programmatic then allows for preparing insertion order (IO) or an ad tag, with the help of the software.

IO, or an insertion order, is a written authorization to publish/display an ad. Generally, it includes,

info regarding date of insertion

number of insertions in a specific period

ad format and size

ad placement, that at the header, side, bottom or over the content

In practical terms, it is a purchase order. It is issued through an ad agency or a media representative.

This prior to programmatic was a labor-intensive task. Nevertheless, the new system can efficiently take care of routine tasks like:

Distributing insertion orders to publishers

Tracking and record keeping of ad tags

However, humans will sit back and reflect on:

Optimizing customized and sophisticated campaigns

Planning strategies for scaling

How does programmatic advertising work?

Once an ad is bought with programmatic advertising then the algorithms evaluate user analytics, on the following basis:

Behavior

Engagement level

Social engagement

Location

Time per visit

This data helps the system to determine what ad content is relevant to a particular user. Accordingly, ad is displayed as an impression on the page. The aim of the ad is to attract user to click on it.

For instance, a user is scanning some blog related to “baby food”. The ad tech system evaluates the user and displays an ad related to “offers on baby food item” or “baby food pouches”.

Thus, by targeting ad to specific user, programmatic advertising can increase efficiency of an ad campaign.

Programmatic vs. Real Time Bidding (RTB)

There is a huge difference between programmatic and real time bidding (RTB). RTB as the name suggests is a process that allows ad space to be bought and sold on per-impression basis. It one of the several ways for purchasing space in an online world.

SSP: Sellers and media owners who have inventories to sell use supply-side platform or SSP

Ad exchange: Ad exchange sits between the two – DSP and SSP. Buyers bid for available inventory that matches the criterion in their DSP. Bid with the highest price win and thus the ad is served.

Programmatic advertising is a technology that enables advertisers to automatically target audience. The audience is ‘selected’ because of certain metrics that are obtained through algorithms.

It is not necessary that advertisers who employ programmatic make use of RTB to purchase. They can buy inventory space in “traditional way” but utilizing programmatic technology. This process has been termed as Programmatic Direct.

What is programmatic direct?

Programmatic direct utilizes one-to-one interaction, that is, between advertiser and publisher. It is very much like the conventional buying of ad inventory. However, software is added into the system.

In here, terms and conditions of media-campaign is previously decided by the advertiser and publisher. Finally, AdTech platform is used for automating the delivery and tracking of the campaigns.

What is programmatic TV advertising?

As the name suggests, programmatic TV advertising is technology enabled data-driven method of buying and delivering ads against TV content.

Television media alone is a huge market. In 2018, $84 billion was the TV ads spend in the US. Television ad business on “connected TV” is running programmatic ads.

By “connected TV” we mean, watching TV content over internet.

Consumers are consuming content at their own leisure and choice of device. Netflix and Amazon are giving direct-to-consumer services. This has drastically changed the consumer expectations around ads. Eventually, this could pose a threat to traditional ad-break model.

Hence, advertisers have started targeting ads through programmatic TV advertising.

Although, programmatic TV advertising is still in its infancy but it is growing steadily. Currently, 44% advertisers are doing programmatic TV.

What is programmatic native advertising?

Native programmatic advertising is native advertising but with a technology backup, that enables advertisers to make native ads even more relevant.

Native advertising means, ads within a content. They look like part of the editorial flow. Generally, they are placed on social media feeds or are under ‘recommended’ section.

Native ads are super compelling, specially the pictorial part, hence, people tend to click on it easily. As per statistics, spending on native advertising in the United States was $21 billion in 2018.

These ads give good result cross mobile devices. As per BI Intelligence, native ads will account for 63% of mobile ad revenue by 2020, up from 53% in 2016.

Currently, advertisers are leveraging on three different types of video ads. They are:

Instream video ads: They are delivered ‘before’ or ‘in-between’ video content. With an enabled “skip” option, they usually consume 15 to 30 seconds.

Outstream video ads: They do not require video players to run. They are positioned inside article content. They appear somewhere in the page break of an article.

In-banner video ads: These ads are displayed in an ad format, which means, they are integrated with video. In-banner video ads are quite popular specially on 970×250 video billboards. Billboard is one of the most prominent and most visible placements within the publisher’s page.

Demand for programmatic video advertising is going up. According to statistics, by 2019, 77% of all US digital video ad dollars will move programmatically.

Why use programmatic advertising?

Programmatic is an efficient way for running advertising campaign. Here are some pointers that prove it is the future of digital ad buying.

Next-gen ad system: Relying on algorithms for determining ad spends and getting full- fledged tracking report with deep insights for every impression is a winning game for advertisers.

Overall efficiency: It is one of the most optimal ways of running every campaign. Programmatic helps in sending right message, at the right time with the right format. Thus, the technology helps in using the budget in the most efficient manner.

Some free time: Once the tags are entered into the system, advertiser needs to sit back and track each campaign. Simultaneously, he may think of launching new campaigns and ways to expand it.

It is beyond human limitation, to dig deep into every rows and columns of data to get into the countless data points. This kind of rendering is only possible through high-level processing done by algorithms.

Technology behind programmatic advertising comes in as a very handy tool as it can easily crunch through such information.

For instance, if an advertiser wants to run localized aggressive campaign, an automated system can handle that for you. You just have to select the parameters, like:

Age

Gender

Income

Location (in this case, it will be local)

Only small, well-defined subset of the market will see the ad.

Wider audience pool: Programmatic accesses digital properties cross screens. It not only caters to web media houses but in gaming apps as well. Thus, you can target ads to wider audience pool.

In touch with customer’s journey: Programmatic enables you to target audience through multiple digital devices.

Brands can reach their consumers:

while their they accessing their laptop or desktop and

When they switch to their tab or mobile device

Since, programmatic does not allow the ad to lose track cross devices. This gives an upper edge to an advertiser to reach to its audience more discreetly.

Programmatic Advertising: The Takeaway

Faster reporting times and endless data is only the tip of iceberg when dealing with programmatic advertising. Technology cross internet is moving very fast. Time is right to adopt it at the earliest else we might leave the most important information, that is, our customers data on the table.

Let’s take a peek into the current statistics, after all, the numbers speak for themselves.